‘No place to call home’

PUBLISHED: 06:00 13 June 2019 Andrew Hirst Kylie Goodyear and her family chose to live in a caravan rather than the council’s B&B emergency accommodation Picture: ANDREW HIRST Archant A huge rise in homelessness applications has seen councils spend six-figure sums placing people in emergency B&Bs. The Chequers Hotel in Ipswich is one of several B&Bs used by Suffolk councils Picture: ARCHANT Figures released following Freedom of Information requests from this newspaper show councils have faced increases of up to 500% in the number of people seeking help from homelessness. It has pushed spending on emergency accommodation to record levels. Ipswich Borough Council spent £434,000 on B&Bs last year. In Tendring, where homelessness applications doubled in a year, more than £800,000 was spent from 2017-19. Councils say they are working to reduce their reliance on B&Bs and only use them as a last resort. But the charity Crisis has warned many families were being left in emergency accommodation for months at a time. The longest single B&B stay in our region was 293 days recorded by Babergh District Council (BDC), followed by 227 days by Colchester Borough Council. One father, who BDC placed in The Chequers in Ipswich for 10 weeks with his partner and children, said it almost tore his family apart. The rise in B&B use followed the introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act (HRA) in April 2018, which has been described as the “biggest change in homelessness regulation in 40 years”. Councils are now obliged to help… [Read full story]